Ha Giang – Dong Van 22nd - 24th of June

After our bus ride back from Halong we had told Viet how after Halong bay we didn’t want to do Sapa and be in another of Vietnam’s hotspots for tourism. 

So he recommended another place in the north where western tourists are few and far between, so all four of us decided to take the night bus to Ha Giang in the north of Vietnam.
After the night bus we arrived in the middle of nowhere at 4am looking in our guide books and wishing we had done some pre planning – we weren’t even sure we were in Ha Giang. After some sleepy taxi drivers asking us where we were going we ended up going to a small “resort” on the edge of town.
We must have caught the resort by surprise because they had to make up the rooms for us; once our rooms were ready we had a quick sleep.
Later that morning we hired some motorbikes and went off into town looking for some coffee and local food. We knew that when we visited Dong Van that we would need a permit to be in the area of Meo Vac as it is so close to the border of China, now there isn’t much information about how to get this permit so we spent most of the day riding around town trying to find the tourism office, we never found it. 

Route Ha Giang to Dong Van

Our resort rung a hotel in Dong Van for us and organised a room, and informed us that they would sort out the permit on arrival. As our resort didn’t have a bar we decided to have a poker night, so we rode all around down trying to find cold beer and some food. Turns out cold beer was hard to find, we stopped off for some Banh Mi to take home and the guy said the woman across the road sold beer, she had set up a small footpath bar which locals stopped off at for a beer and some peanuts. We told her we wanted around a dozen beers, so with a quick phone call a guy arrives with a crate of beer and some ice. With our supplies carefully balanced on the bike we headed back for poker night, we didn’t have any chips so we used piles of candy. 

The next day we were given two motorbikes and some dodgy helmets one of which was bashed in, they obviously only wear the helmets as it’s the law, not because it will save your head from being caved in.
We found a route on google maps and headed off, we were not even 5 minutes out of town and we got our first view of the amazing northern country side, we knew that this was going to be a great ride. We rode through open farmlands with rice paddy as far as the eye could see, over mountains (on a 100cc bike this is a very slow process) along rivers in valleys and through small villages.

We became quite the sight in the countryside, as locals would stop whatever work they were doing and stare at us as if we were the first westerners they had seen. We went through some road works and after getting some looks from the workers; Ylan chuckled and told us they had exclaimed, “white people! And look they can ride motorbikes!” After around 7 hours, lots of photo/bum rest stops. 

We had arrived in Dong Van, a small town where the surrounding Hmong people come to the morning market and sell their produce. We booked into our room and went to border control with our passports, after some money changed hands and we filled out a form we received our permit to visit the area.

Ylan had seen signs advertising duck foetus eggs, Jerry decided that we must try them, so we sat down and got a few beers, Ylan dived into the bowl of eggs and gave us a demonstration. The words membrane and juices were mentioned far too often, it turns out there is quite a technique in eating a partially developed duck. I found it wasn’t as bad as I thought, the egg itself was over cooked and the white was chewy but with a dollop of chilli the whole experience wasn’t that bad. We must have looked quite funny with the odd looks on our faces while watching Ylan and our careful approach. 

We headed out and found a hot bowl of noodle soup and went to bed, the next day our bums still a little sore we visited the local market, which was teaming with activity. A sea of colourful Hmong clothing, pigs squealing, people sell rice cakes, veges, meats and of course table after table serving up noodle soup for breakfast to all the hungry locals. 

We sat down among the tables and ordered some soup and just sat there watching the market, not a tourist in sight, no one trying to sell us tacky wares, just people living their normal lives. It was so refreshing being able to just wander and take in the surroundings as we navigated around the market. But we knew that if we wanted to get back to Ha Giang by dark we would need to leave Dong van before 10am, point to point the ride is only 150km but the winding roads and step mountains meant that is took around 6-7 hours, especially with all the bum rest stops and photo ops. 

The we got back to Ha Giang and we would be glad never to see a motorbike again. That night we had to get back to Hanoi as Ylan had to get a flight the next morning. We had found all the buses full and decided to use a local taxi to take us the 7 hours back. We thought “well this will be more comfortable than the bus”, but with 3 of us in the back and 1 in the front of a Toyota corolla we soon decided it wasn’t as comfortable as we thought. We left at around 9pm and finally got into Hanoi at 4am looking like zombies.
We arrived back at our favourite hotel finnegans greeted by Viets younger brother and were given a room and we all flopped on the beds and fell asleep, unfortunately for Ylan she only got an hour sleep or so before having to get up and catch her plane.
Myself Hannah and Jerry went to the supermarket brought some junk food and spent the day in the room watching telly nursing our sore bums.

A trip to remember